Obama, Cameron take in 'Heartland'

President Barack Obama said he took British Prime Minister David Cameron to an NCAA basketball game in Dayton, Ohio, on Tuesday because he wanted to show Cameron the American heartland.

“I thought it was going to be wonderful for the prime minister to have a chance not only to see a basketball game for the first time but also to come to the great state of Ohio,” Obama told CBS analyst Clark Kellogg during a halftime interview broadcast on TruTV. “Because sometimes when we have foreign visitors, they’re only visiting the coasts. They go to New York, they go to Washington, they go to Los Angeles. But you know the heartland is what it’s all about.”

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The event, the first of several scheduled during Cameron’s official visit to the United States, also doesn’t hurt Obama in an election year when the heartland is a critical electoral battleground. And connecting to sports fans can’t hurt either.

As POLITICO’s Caitlin McDevitt reported, the president filled out his March Madness bracket before heading to the game and is predicting that Kentucky, Ohio State, Missouri and North Carolina will make the Final Four in the men’s tournament. For the women, Obama picked Baylor, St. John’s, UConn and Notre Dame.

Obama and Cameron were greeted with loud cheers by the boisterous crowd as he entered the University of Dayton arena, which wasn’t quite full. They were joined at the game by White House chief of staff Jack Lew and Downing Street chief of staff Ed Llewellyn, as well as Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

Cameron and Obama spent a good portion of the first half talking. Cameron said he found the game “pretty fast and furious.”

“It’s hard to follow sometimes exactly who’s done what wrong,” Cameron told Kellogg during the interview, noting that the president had given him some tips and promised to help him fill out his bracket.